I was accused yesterday by one of my friends as being a slacker (hi Ray). He was only kidding of course – well I hope he was…
(More on Ray another time.)
It’s because I haven’t sent out anything useful this last week or so.
Well today I change that with a new video that if you follow it through will easily give your business more credibility and also make you look more professional in the eyes of your customers.
I’ve been helping quite a few more people than normal recently as there have been quite a few new members join the SmartDD site, and of course I always get lots of questions when that happens.
Some of the things I’ve been helping people out with mean I’ve been looking at their web sites, and web control panels. And seeing a disturbing trend there reminded me of something I’ve known for a while but then forgot about.
When someone buys something from you either from your website or via eBay, then it’s likely that there will be some kind of automated communication from you, (usually via email) to confirm their order.
Especially if you’re using SmartDD to deliver your goods.
And this is what I noticed a long time ago, and had forgotten about.
A lot of people are running their businesses using either free email addresses, or the email address from their ISP.
I’m sorry but I cringe when I see that, especially as it’s so easy to fix.
About a week ago I was at one of my son’s schools waiting to collect him at the end of the day, and I saw a big guy there (tall, wide) wearing a jacket with something like "easyfitwindows@aol.com" plastered all across the back.
(I made that address up as I can’t remember what it was.)
Now, exactly whose business is he promoting there? I say it’s AOL. There’s no mention of his business website.
Think about it, what looks more professional to your customers.
1) lunchtimereads@aol.com
OR
2) sales@lunchtimereads.com
And consider this.
When you’re using eBay, you’re allowed to put a contact email address in all your listings. If you use an email address in the style of option 1, you’re wasting an opportunity to drive traffic to your own website.
By using an email in the style of number 2, you could put something like this into all your listings instead:-
"If you have any queries, then please email me on:-
sales @ LunchTimeReads.com"
That makes it sort of a giveaway where your website might be, eh? And that will get traffic to your web site.
So anyway, back on track.
After looking at a lot of cPanel installations, I realised that many people don’t know how to set up an email address off their domain.
And let’s face it, most web hosts don’t tell their customers how to use cPanel, they expect them to check out the highly technical cPanel docs which are just filled with incomprehensible jargon.
So I thought I’d fix that for you.
I’ve put together a short video explaining how to set up a new email account in cPanel, and then it shows you how to best add that new account to Outlook Express without jumbling it in with your other email addresses.
If you don’t use cPanel or Outlook Express, the principle is no different with other hosting or email software, you just need to check out how yours works.
http://www.smartdd.com/special/email_cpanel_oe_imap_setup.php
Watch it, learn, and enjoy your new found skill and email address. And feel free to share the link above with your friends.
Agreed, for a novice webmaster the cPanel 10 interface can be a bit on the hard-to-understand side of things.
In cPanel 11 (to be out shortly), we have taken steps to simplify and explain things without the excessive use of technical jargon characteristic of our cPanel 10 documentation. Things are explained rather than assuming users already understand the interface. We also have context sensitive help now so users can easily get the help they need without searching through the docs.
Another thing we did to simplify the setting up of e-mail in the cPanel interface is incorporate a getting started wizard so new users can set up everything that should be configured the first time they login as well as gain a better understanding as to where files should be uploaded, walk through getting drive letter access to their web hosting (new feature in cPanel 11), using file manager etc.
In addition, e-mail features are no longer “hidden,” it’s right on the main page of the cPanel interface now.
cPanel 11 should be out in a couple of weeks and if you haven’t seen the new interface, I would recommend looking at it since it’s probably the first major change in the interface since the beginning of cPanel.
Hey David, thanks for your comments, I really appreciate them.
I’ve always been a cPanel fan, it’s by far the easiest to use and most logical of the web control panels. It’s one of the reasons I always recommend Hostgator to my customers.
I haven’t yet seen the new interface (trust me to do a video right before it all changes), I’ll take a look later this evening when it’s quieter.
The current interface is fine as far as I’m concerned, but a few years ago when it was all new to me, it did take me a while to get used to how it all hung together. And even though I now have my own dedicated server there are still a few things I don’t understand about hosting in general.
But I know enough to get by and do what I need to run my business.
I did the video in response as I said to seeing that people were running their business off free email addresses, when they had perfectly good domains to use their own.
Interestingly, I’ve only had a couple of comments back from people on my mailing list that I sent this out to. Both were positive and thanking me for showing them how to set up their email.
I don’t know whether to take the low reponse as a good or a bad thing. I guess time will tell.
And a big thank you while I have your attention…
THANK YOU for cPanel.